


Flash Forward

by anonsensicalgirl



Series: Time Travel is Messy [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, SINCE DC NEVER WILL, Time Travel, and by golly i'm going to give it to them, not sure how long this will end up being, pretty fluffy, the batfam just deserves happiness okay?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonsensicalgirl/pseuds/anonsensicalgirl
Summary: A collection of drabbles/prompts connected to my fic "Flashback." I highly recommend reading that one first, since these will probably make very little sense without its context :)(note: the bonus chapter originally posted to Flashback has been moved here)





	1. Finding Out

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh, this has taken me TOO LONG to put up. Originally I had thought I was done with this fic, but I got a few requests and figured, "why not?" However I will warn you that if I post more chapters on this it will probably be very sporadic, since I do have some other fics in the works (including all my original stuff, eeek) that I need to get working on.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> original note: Here it is! For context, this alternate scene would have taken place in Chapter Three, when Helena comes to ask for Selina’s help. And…it ended up being a lot longer than planned. Oh well. I guess I just needed to write it as therapy to deal with my anger issues with DC right now. #justletbrucewaynebehappy2018

A part of Selina told her it was a very bad idea to call Bruce. The other part told her it was the only reasonable thing to do. The trouble was, she couldn’t decide which side was her brain speaking, and the other side her feelings. When it came to Bruce, sometimes those two were difficult to differentiate between.

She picked up the phone to call. “Hey, B?”

“Selina?” He sounded surprised.

“You know the girl we ran into last night? She just found my apartment and tried to hire me to lift something from your labs.”

“What?”

“I drugged her. She’s unconscious on the couch right now, but she’s not going to be happy when she wakes up.”

“I’m already in the area,” Bruce answered. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Selina didn’t ask how he knew where she lived, even though she’d never told him. Bruce generally kept pretty good tabs on her, despite the fact that she found it annoying. She didn’t ask what he was doing in the area, either, although she wondered if he was already on his way to see her to talk about what had happened the other night.

Grabbing some rope from the kitchen, she turned the girl over to tie her wrists together and then propped her up against the couch. There was a knock at the door.

“Selina?” It was Bruce.

He must have been very close, she thought. “Come in.” Selina was already sliding her fingers along the lining of the girl’s jacket to see what she had on her. She pulled out a wallet.

“She looks a lot younger than I thought last night,” Bruce said, shutting the front door and coming closer. “She disguised herself as a janitorial worker yesterday to get into the Wayne Enterprises building, but I guess I hadn’t paid close enough attention to her.”

“She said she wanted to hire me to steal a “glowing purple stone” from Wayne Labs,” Selina said. “That would be weird enough, but something is off about this girl. I don’t like it.”

“Did she give a name?”

“No, but, I think I’ll have it in a second.” Selina whipped out the girl’s wallet. “I found this.” She opened it. “Here we go. Helena…”she stopped, and Bruce waited.

“Helena Wayne.” Selina’s voice ended in a question, and she glanced back to the girl on her couch. “Is she related to you?”

“What? No. Can I see?”

Selina handed the wallet to Bruce and then leaned down so her face was level with the girl’s. She squinted her eyes, looking for a resemblance. Of course, she knew there were other people in the world with the last name of Wayne. It just seemed like an odd coincidence. And as she looked there was something about her that reminded her of Bruce. It was subtle, but there.

“This can’t be right.”

Selina turned to see Bruce frowning at the driver’s license. “Did you look at the date? It’s all wrong. According to this, she’s not even born yet. And the date of issue is almost thirty years from now.”

"Why would anyone create a fake ID with the wrong date?"

"That's just it," Bruce said, holding the licence up to the light and examining it. "I don't think it's fake."

“So, what, she’s like your daughter from the future or something?” Selina joked. She looked over Bruce’s shoulder and her face lost its humor. “Her middle name is Martha,” she said, looking at the license again. “That was your mom’s name, wasn’t it?”

“I know you were just joking,” Bruce began, “But…”

“Oh, come on, B,” Selina said, moving away from him and trying to blow it off, even though she was uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate. “Time travel? That’s a stretch, even for Gotham. Besides, if she’s your daughter, why’d she come to me?”

Bruce was silent.

“B?”

But he was staring at something else he’d taken from the girl’s wallet, something he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from. Slowly, without looking up at her, he handed it to Selina.

It was a photograph. As she looked at it, the world swam around her and she reached for a chair. She swore and sat down hard, her feet feeling unsteady beneath her. It was at that moment she realized why she’d begun to feel unsettled those moments before. Somehow, her body seemed to have known who the girl was before her head did.

The picture was an old one—at least it appeared that way due to its foxed edges and the slight crease in the lower left corner. It was a picture of a curly-haired girl, cheeks full of air as she prepared to blow out six candles on a birthday cake. Though Selina couldn’t be positive, by resemblance alone she would have guessed that it was the same girl who was now lying on Selina’s couch. But that wasn’t what had caused her head to go dizzy and her steps to falter; no, that reaction was due to the woman behind the girl, grinning widely and giving the girl a loving squeeze. The woman might have been older, her hair a little shorter, and her clothes something other than black, but she was definitely, undeniably Selina.

And the background was unmistakably the kitchen at Wayne Manor.

“She looks more like you than she does like me,” Bruce said, staring at the girl on the couch. He’d sat down, too. He seemed to be handling the whole situation marginally better than Selina, but he still looked shell-shocked.

Selina could have overlooked any resemblance in the girl on the couch—she really couldn’t see it that much—but the girl in the photo? She looked so strikingly like the lone picture Selina had of herself as a child that she could have almost thought the six-year-old was her, if the older woman’s identity wasn’t already so obvious.

She looked back at the couch. The girl’s head of wild curls would have been exactly like Selina’s had they not been several shades darker. Her mouth and bone structure, Selina realized, was much like her own, but as Selina thought about it, she realized just why the girl had disturbed her so much.

“When she was talking…” Selina began. “Her facial expressions…they were all you.” That’s what had felt so off about the girl. She felt like she’d known the girl already, even though she hadn’t.

Selina ran a hand through her hair and tried to breathe. “So…in the future…we have a kid,” she said, trying to wrap her head around it. “And that’s her.”

“Unless we’ve completely misread the situation,” Bruce said. “Which is entirely possible due to the very implausibility of this whole state of affairs.”

“Can you please talk like a normal human being for, like, five seconds, Bruce?” Selina asked. “How are you not freaking out? I’m freaking out. I’m trying not to freak out.”

“What is there to freak out about?”

“I don’t know. The fact that I’m nineteen years old and just found out that I have a daughter who’s probably older than I am right now.”

“Well, so do I.”

“Exactly! I have a daughter with you!”

Bruce looked at the photo again, his eyes zeroing in on the ring on Selina’s finger. “Would this not be a good time to tell you that we’re married?”

Selina rolled her eyes heavenward and took a deep breath. “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.” She glanced at Bruce to see a ghost of a smile on his face.

“What?”

“It’s just gratifying to know you said “yes.”

“Oh, shut up.” She whacked him on the arm and rolled her eyes, turning so he wouldn’t see that she was (ridiculous as it was, she admitted) smiling. She shouldn’t be. The whole thing couldn’t be real. People like him didn’t marry people like her. And if they did, it never lasted. Girls like her didn’t get happy endings.

And to be honest, she wasn’t sure guys like Bruce ended up getting them, either. Tragedy seemed to follow him wherever he went.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Bruce said quietly. Selina suddenly had a vision of Bruce as a dad, the kind whose daughter had him completely wrapped around her little finger. It wasn’t a bad look for him, and Selina didn’t like the way her heart softened at the idea. She was certain that thoughts like that couldn’t end up doing any good, even if the girl in front of them did seem to be evidence that she—that she and Bruce—darn it. The girl on the couch stirred and Selina leapt backward and scrambled away like a true cat.

Bruce remained unmoved and continued to stare at the girl as she woke up.

The girl—Helena—struggled to sit up and blinked a few times. “Hey!” she said. “What is this? How—?”

Her eyes widened when she saw her wallet on the table, dumped of its contents. “Oh no. No no no no no. You took my stuff. You can’t look at that!”

“Yeah, I think it’s too late for that,” Selina said. “Care to explain?”

The girl bit her lip and looked between Bruce and Selina, as if unsure what all they knew. “What do you…can I have my wallet back?” Selina realized Helena had worked her wrists out of her bonds when she moved her hands forward to reach for her things. Selina handed her the wallet, the photo and license stacked atop it.

“Were these all that you saw?” the girl asked.

“There’s more?” Selina asked in disbelief.

“So your name is Helena,” Bruce said. “And you’re…”

“…from the future,” Helena finished.

“I don’t think that’s the confession he was looking for,” Selina mumbled.

“What proof do you have?” Bruce asked, not unkindly, but firmly. Like he was talking to a child, Selina thought.

The girl swallowed. “If I am from the future, won’t I wreck it if I start telling you things that are going to happen?” She looked to Selina and then back at Bruce. “What other proof can I have other than this?” she held up her license. She sighed and ran her hands over her face. “This is not how I rehearsed this conversation.” She looked accusingly at Selina. “I can’t believe you drugged me.”

“You shouldn’t trust strangers, kid.” The kid came out too easily.

“Well I wasn’t expecting my own—” Helena stopped.

“Your own what?” Selina asked, daring her to finish the sentence. She felt her breath hitch and she didn’t exhale until Helena answered.

“My own mother.” Helena finished reluctantly. “Don’t tell me you didn’t already figure it out. I know you’re both smarter than that.”

“That doesn’t make you saying it any less shocking,” Bruce admitted.

Helena groaned and buried her face in the couch cushions. “And now you’re thoroughly weirded out and can’t even look at each other and I’ll end up not existing at all because I was stupid.”

“Hey,” Bruce hesitated a moment and then sat on the couch and patted her shoulder. “Hey. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Selina wanted to snort in derision, but she couldn’t. Something had twisted inside her when Helena had buried her face, and when the girl looked up and Selina realized there were tear tracks of all things on the girl’s cheeks, and that there were more tears welling up in eyes exactly like Bruce’s, she knew she was done for.

“Don’t…don’t cry.” Selina said awkwardly. She moved closer to the girl and sat down slowly, unsure what she was supposed to do. She wasn’t supposed to actually act like a parent, was she? But as soon as she got close enough, Helena buried her face in Selina’s shoulder and began to sniffle back tears. Selina didn’t have to act parental, suddenly she just was.

“Hey, hey.” Selina’s arms tightened around the girl. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll get you back home somehow, okay?”

“I’m sorry for crying,” the girl moved back and wiped her eyes. “That’s not a great first impression, is it? I’ve just been here for days and it’s been kind of miserable.”

“How did you get here?” Bruce asked.

Helena cleared her throat and explained. “I accidentally triggered a time machine. Of course, I didn’t know that’s what it was when I picked it up. When I came through, the machine broke. I need a new power source, and the only thing I can find that might work is that stone you’ve got in the lab.”

“But you don’t know if that will work or not?” Bruce asked.

Helena shook her head. “It’s the best I’ve got, though.”

“Well, we’ll help you get it either way. And if that doesn’t work, we won’t stop until you’re back home safely. Right, Selina?”

Selina nodded, not sure she could trust her voice.

Helena wiped her eyes quickly. “Could I use your bathroom?”

“Yeah.” Selina pointed. “It’s right through that door.” Both of them knew she didn’t really need to use it; she just thought Selina and Bruce needed a moment. She was right.

Selina slumped into the couch. “Bruce?” she said quietly and glanced at him. “What does this mean?”

“For us, you mean?”

Selina took back the wallet, which was balancing on the armrest of the couch. Helena had left it when she’d gone to the bathroom. She examined the photo again.

“I look so happy,” Selina whispered.

“Maybe that’s what it means,” Bruce said softly.

“What?"

Bruce’s hand moved towards hers tentatively, his fingers touching hers. “That we'll be happy.”

And as her fingers intertwined with his, for the first time Selina let herself believe it was possible.


	2. A Full House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the TheOKWriter who asked, “Can you do one with them talking about the adopted bat children?”

Selina knew she shouldn’t have. But while Helena was still in the bathroom, she opened the wallet again. _Were those all you saw?_ Helena had said. That meant there had to be more.

“Bruce,” she said quietly. “There’s another photo.”

“Are you sure you should—”

Selina pulled it out.

He sighed. “ _Selina_.”

It was Christmas. She could tell by the tree in the background and the greenery on the bannisters. She recognized Helena, who was maybe a year or two older in this one than she was in the birthday photo. She was riding on the back of a tall, handsome boy of about eighteen or nineteen and had an empty wrapping paper tube she was trying to bring down on the head of another boy, who was turned away from her, distracted as he tried to hit yet _another_ boy with his wrapping paper tube. Another boy was chasing a young girl down the hallway; the photo had caught her mid-jump as she leapt over a pile of discarded wrapping. It looked like absolute, delightful chaos.

Selina looked up from the photo when she heard a groan.

“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes.” Helena said, displeased. “Now you’re going to want me to explain _that_.”

“Who are all these people?”

Helena snatched the photo. “Well, most people keep pictures of their family in their wallet. I am no exception.”

“I didn’t look at it.” Bruce said.

Helena glanced at both of them and then sank down into the couch between them. Both Bruce and Selina had to shift so there was enough room. Helena took out the photo. “That’s me,” she said, pointing. “But I guess you already figured that out,” she glanced at Selina. She pointed to the teen she was riding. “That’s Dick. He’s the oldest. You adopt him first.”

“Adopt?” Selina asked. “Wait,” she said, disbelieving. “Are all of these kids _ours_?”

“It’s not like we don’t have enough room,” Bruce said.

Selina didn’t understand how Bruce continued to take these revelations so calmly. “There are _six_ of them.”

“Well, six in the picture,” Helena corrected.

Selina closed her eyes and fell back on the couch.

“I don’t think I should say anymore,” Helena said. “This is too much for you guys.”

“But we have six kids?” Bruce asked.

“Four of them are adopted, two aren’t.” She shrugged. “I’m one of the two. But that’s all that’s _official_. You have a habit of taking in stray kids they way Mom has of taking in stray cats.”

Selina opened one eye. “How many cats do we have?”

“Uhhh…a lot. Also, we have a cow.”

“We can’t we just be a normal family and get a dog?” Bruce asked.

“Oh, we’ve got a dog, too.”

“This is sounding more and more like a circus than a family.”

 

Helena tried not smirk as she remembered Dick teaching her to do flips across the living room. “You’d be surprised at how accurate that is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Yeah, I really don’t know how some of this would work in the Gotham universe, so I wasn’t super specific. Especially Damian—I can’t imagine Bruce and Talia ever getting together, however briefly, with Gotham’s version of the characters. (Of course, as I am not a Talia fan—no offense to those who are—this may be me being biased.) I did contemplate the odd theory that Damian could have been Talia’s son with Five (if, you know, he managed to live long enough) but ultimately I decided to imply that he’s just Bruce and Selina’s son. Normally, then, I would have made him Helena’s younger brother (since I like the idea of her being their first biological child) but I’d already mentioned her being the youngest. Goodness, I am going to need a notebook to keep all this plot stuff straight. *massages forehead* But yeah, if any of that doesn’t float your boat, I tried to keep it vague enough so that you can fill in the blanks yourself.


	3. A Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For multipliiehearts, who requested Helena warning them about Selina getting shot.

“You and your morals,” Selina muttered. “You always make things twice as difficult.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “If we’re talking about Jerome again—”

They’d been working for the past hour, trying to figure out how to help Helena. After two hours of discussion, he and Selina had fallen into bickering. Helena’s eyes were tired, as if it was something she was used to. She sipped her coffee matter-of-factly as she sat on the floor in front of them, her back leaning against the couch and her legs stretched in front of her. His and Selina’s arguing didn’t seem to faze her, suggesting that they still made a habit of butting heads thirty years into the future.

Oh well. He guessed the more things changed, the more things stayed the same. (To be honest, he would have been a slight bit disappointed if they _had_ stopped fighting. They wouldn’t really be them without it, would they? But he could have done without _this_ argument.)

“I _had_ him!” Selina complained. “Seriously, Bruce.”

“Well, I’m sorry I just wanted to keep you from having blood on your hands!”

“Unless you’ve forgotten, I already do. I pushed a man out of a window for you!”

“ _I didn’t ask you to!_ ”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Valeska would be dead by now and Gotham safer if you hadn’t stopped me.”

Bruce saw Helena stiffen, and a spot of coffee sloshed from her mug and spattered on Selina’s floor. The look on her face was hard to determine, but one he was beginning to recognize. They’d just touched a sore spot for Helena, one that meant they’d hit on something that connected to their futures.

“Jerome…he…” Helena took a deep breath and started over. “Oh man. I’d forgotten how close it is to—”

“To what?” Selina asked. She glanced at Bruce, the animosity between them immediately evaporating.

“You know something,” Bruce said. “And you don’t know whether or not to tell us.”

“Yeah.” Helena frowned into her mug. “I don’t think I can warn you about everything. Because it’s not entirely Valeska. If he wasn’t the one—” Her brows furrowed. “It’s like knowing how to save your parents, Dad, if you went back in time. You know when they get shot, but someone was out to get them. If you’d saved them then, would they just die another time, and you’d be caught in a time loop forever trying to stop it?”

“Someone dies?” Selina asked. Bruce could feel the tension radiating off of her. He wanted to grab her hand, put an arm around her—something. But he didn’t think she’d accept it from him just then.

Helena shook her head. “You don’t die. But you do get shot. And it’s…it’s _bad_.”

“How bad?” Selina asked. Anyone else would have thought her voice perfectly even and emotionless. But Bruce could hear the slight quiver in her words.

Helena’s own voice wobbled. “They said you’d never walk again.”

“They said,” Bruce rushed to say before he could face the look on Selina’s face. “She does, doesn’t she?”

“Only because you cheated,” Helena said quietly to Bruce. “The way you saved Alfred.”

“Water from the Lazarus pit,” Bruce said in understanding. “But how—”

“It wasn’t Valeska’s idea to shoot her,” Helena said. “His plan to break you failed, Dad. But then Ra’s al Ghul came and…he knew how to hurt you the most. And he knew what you’d do to help Mom, even if it meant being manipulated by him. Becoming what he wanted you to be.”

“Just…just stop,” Selina said. “Can’t we just _stop_ it?”

“I don’t know! He shoots you at Wayne manor. The day… I don’t know the exact date. You guys didn’t like talking about it much.” She took a deep breath. “All I know is that you always referred to it as _one bad day,_ like it meant something.”

Selina looked at Bruce, and though she tried to hide it, he could see the fear in her eyes. Selina wasn’t one to show when she was frightened, and he wished he knew what to do.

“Then we find Jerome,” Bruce said. “We find him, and we take him in like we tried to do before.”

Helena looked uncomfortable. “I said Valeska. Not Jerome.” She bit her lip. “You’ll understand that better when it’s time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bruce asked. “Helena, you have to tell us.”

Helena shook her head. “I can’t. Do you realize how much you already know? I don’t know how much I’ve changed history already. And if I tell you more, maybe it will end up better in the end. But it also might end up _worse_.”

And Bruce knew that, as much as she might want to, his daughter wouldn’t share anything more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Yep, I went into some speculation there. I can’t imagine that Selina won’t walk again in Gotham, but how she regains the use of her legs (if the doctors aren’t wrong in their prognosis) is up to the imagination. Personally, I can easily imagine Ra’s giving Jeremiah the idea to shoot Selina to hurt Bruce, and of course he wouldn’t need much prodding to do so.


	4. Alfred, Waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a break from the last couple of chapters, and instead is more of an addition to the original fic. Kou_shun_u suggested a scene wherein Alfred worries about Helena's existence, and well...I couldn't resist.

Alfred slowly walked down the steps. He'd last seen Bruce and Selina asleep on the couch, and he could only assume they were still there. He glanced back upstairs. It wasn't that he hadn't believed Helena--at least, not exactly. But still, seeing her disappear in front of his eyes had been a shock.

Selina was sitting cross-legged on the couch when he walked in. Bruce appeared a moment later, holding two coffee mugs. "Where is she?" he asked.

"She's already gone," Alfred said. "Took the item and left."

"Well then," Selina shook her head slightly, eyebrow raised as she raised the mug to her lips.

Bruce's brow furrowed.

"She seemed grateful to you both," Alfred said. "I think you did right in helping her."

"Well, you sure changed your tune," Selina said. 

"You didn't like her?" Alfred asked, keeping his voice even.

Selina shrugged, and then at Alfred's look sighed. "I didn't _dislike_ her," she finally said. "But it was like...I don't know. I didn't like the way she _knew_ things. Made me uncomfortable."

And yet Alfred wished that she'd shared a bit more of that knowledge with him.

The day Jeremiah kidnapped him--the day he'd walked in to find Bruce frantically trying to stop Selina from bleeding out on the floor--the thought flashed through his mind: _Helena won't exist_. Maybe that thought was what propelled his fist to punch Jeremiah a bit harder, a bit too many times. When his mind cleared, he calmed himself, and was able to calm Bruce. Selina would make it.

Helena was proof that she did.

But even after she had recovered, Alfred worried, not only for their lives in the no man's land that Gotham had become, but that Bruce and Selina's relationship was faced with obstacles it would never be able to conquer: Bruce's inability to understand that Selina was capable of terrible acts-and _her_ inability to accept that she was capable to so much more goodness than she would allow herself.

But he tried not to worry. He tried as Bruce sunk deeper into his quest for justice, as Selina spiraled in the aftermath of killing Jeremiah. He tried as they were faced with Bane, when they were once again with Jeremiah _who just wouldn't die_ , when Gotham finally began to rebuild itself into something new.

But when all was said and done, they ended up on opposite sides of the law, and Alfred feared that their differences had gone to far for them to ever reconcile. 

* * *

Things changed.

Alfred didn't bat an eye the day Bruce came home with a shivering, scared little boy who'd just lost his parents. Very little surprised him anymore, and even though he wasn't sure Bruce, at the ripe old age of twenty-one, was ready to be a father figure, he hoped the two of them would be able to do each other good.

Things were good then, mostly. Dick was good for the house. He livened things up the way Selina had when she was a girl. Never would Alfred have thought that he would miss those days, but Selina had always been able to make Bruce smile. Dick could do that, too. Of course, it wasn't that Selina was gone from their lives. Far from it.

But she and Bruce had never been typical, and their relationship was just as unusual as they were themselves. It was like a dance-she'd come close, he'd back away. He'd pursue, she'd run. And back and forth it went until even Dick once asked him why the two of them didn't just call it a day and "get married or something."

"It probably has to do with her being a jewel thief, Master Dick." That was all Alfred had told him, not wanting to divulge every complicated facet of Bruce and Selina's relationship, one that he knew well but not entirely. They were...strangely happy, though. Content, for the moment, to push and pull in that constant flirtation. Maybe they'd already burned each other enough to go any deeper than that. And Alfred was happy, but every once in a while--usually when he was alone at night--Helena would come to mind. Maybe she would exist, he thought, if they just had the right push.

But then Jason came, and things changed again. It wasn't that Jason had anything to do with it, per se, but his arrival coincided with a new seriousness on Bruce and Selina's part. They even went on a few real, honest-to-goodness _dates_. But then, swiftly on the heels of Jason's stay came Tim, and somehow things got busy. Selina disappeared for a while. They thought Jason was dead (he was, but only briefly) but it scarred them all nonetheless. Selina had been fond of Jason, as she was of all the boys, all her Robins. And instead of drawing closer together, she and Bruce drifted apart.

 _They'll come back to each other_ , Alfred told himself. _Eventually_. He'd become too invested in this relationship over the years. But didn't he have a reason to? A part of him wondered what it had been about that girl that made him so concerned with her existence. He'd only known her a day, and had only her word that she was Bruce and Selina's daughter. Would it really be so devastating for her to not exist? But Helena was proof of Bruce's future happiness--a light in the dark tunnel that seemed to always threaten to overcome this family. He thought of Helena's smile, the way she looked when she thought of her parents. She was a a child who'd been shaped by love, and it had shown. That love had existed, and while he saw glimpses of it in the way Bruce cared for the boys, there was still something missing. Maybe it wasn't even about Bruce and Selina finding each other; maybe it was that they both had to grasp happiness for themselves before they could have it together.

Then Damian came.

The day Talia dropped off a small infant, unceremoniously declaring him to be Bruce's son, for once Alfred hadn't been able to contain his surprise. Bruce had avoided the League of Assassins like the plague, and when he'd told Alfred that it was impossible for Damian to be his son, Alfred had believed him. A DNA test proved otherwise. It had taken untangling, but they'd discovered that Bruce's clone--having, with the help of Hugo Strange, survived far longer than anyone expected--had impersonated Bruce in an attempt to take over the League of Assassins. He'd disappeared when he was no longer able to hide his deteriorating condition, and died alone, and in secret.

That didn't change the fact that his son had Bruce's DNA and now, an absent mother who was adamant that the child was in danger if she kept him.

 _How have our lives come to this?_  Alfred wondered, as the household got used to a baby. In the span of only a few years, Bruce had gone from a bachelor to a father of four. Even so, none of the boys had ever been so small when they'd first come into their care (Tim had been little more than a toddler, but goodness knows that a four-year-old is still much different than a four-month-old). It wasn't just a shift for Bruce--his other children weren't particularly pleased with the new interloper. Thankfully, that hadn't lasted long, in part due to Dick, who could never resist charming babies. But it was still something to get used to, and it was in this upheaval that Selina reappeared. She slipped through the window of the study just like she'd used to do, and she and Bruce had talked for hours.

Alfred never knew what had occurred during that conversation with Bruce (nor did he want to) but it wasn't long after that that Selina became a solid, ever-present person in their lives, even more so than she had been back in the days when it had been just Bruce and Dick. She hadn't been at the manor that much since she'd lived there, and, indeed, she practically did so now.

"I'm tired, Alfred," she once confessed to him. (He and Selina had grown much closer over the years, and had even moved past their mutual dislike to mutual affection.) "I wanted to come home." Alfred knew what she meant. Her lifestyle simply didn't satisfy her anymore. Bruce was going through the same thing-realizing that however meaningful and right a pursuit of justice was, he needed more in his life. He was devoting himself more to the boys, to being a father. And maybe, perhaps, to be a husband. And for Selina, well, she'd discovered that the sort of life she'd always felt trapped in wasn't the one she wanted. Maybe, after all those years, the two of them had finally gathered enough courage to pursue the life they wanted, rather than the life they'd assumed they were destined to have.

* * *

It was four months after the wedding, and Alfred felt he was only now recovering from the stress that had surrounded the happy occasion. He felt himself humming as he stirred the pot of what would become French onion soup. The boys were off at school and Bruce and Selina were still asleep after a hard night on patrol.

Selina came into the kitchen, wrapped in her robe and probably searching for a cup of coffee. Her faced blanched as soon as she walked into the kitchen, probably, Alfred guessed, overcome with the pungent smell of the onions on the stove. It must have been more overpowering than he thought, because she didn't have time to say anything before she turned and ran to the nearest bathroom. He tried not to wince.

Then realization dawned.

 _Oh, thank God_ , he thought.

* * *

"We've got a bet going," Jason said with a grin. "Boy or-?"

"Girl."Alfred didn't look up from the silver he was polishing. "My money's on it being a girl."

"You sure?" Dick asked. "I mean, we're kind of a boys-only family at this point."

"Believe me," Alfred said. "It is most definitely going to be a girl."

* * *

Helena Martha Wayne was born with bright blue eyes and not a single hair on her head.

"Don't worry," Alfred said, smiling as he got to hold her for the first time. "I'm sure you're going to have a head full of curls, just like your mother." He shifted the baby, who'd begun to make impatient noises. Her eyelids fluttered, and she looked up into Alfred's face with an intent gaze not unlike her father's.

He was absolutely smitten.

* * *

Alfred was checking the ingredients off his list for all that he'd need to Jason's birthday cake. He was relieved that Jason, after a rough few years, seemed to have been getting along with the family--especially Bruce. It was his first birthday since he'd come back home, and Alfred hoped that tomorrow would go smoothly. Footsteps thundered down the hall. He recognized them as Helena's tread, and a moment later she popped into the kitchen.

"Good morning, Alfred!" she said cheerily. 

His face lit up in a smile. Most everyone in the family's did when it came to Helena. 

"Good morning, Miss Helena." He glanced up momentarily. "Do you need anything to eat before you leave?"

"Oh, I'm going to meet Cass for breakfast before I go out shopping." Bruce and Selina had adopted Cassandra a year or two after Helena's birth, and as the only two sisters in such a large family, they were close. She yawned. "Jason't not easy to shop for, but I'm sure I can find something."

Something stopped Alfred; a strange case of deja vu. He set down the cookbook and looked at Helena. Something about her this morning-her clothing, the way she was wearing her hair--it seemed oddly familiar. _It's today_. He hadn't forgotten her time travel escapade, but he'd worried about it much less since her birth. These past few years, though--as she'd grown close to the age he'd first met her, when she got the driver's license that she'd shown him--he'd begun to worry again. This time, about making sure she came back.

"Stay safe, Miss Helena."

"Of course, Alfred," she said as she left the house. "Don't I always?"

* * *

He heard excited yelling coming from upstairs, and minutes later Helena's footsteps pounding through the halls.

"I'm back!"

He closed his eyes a moment, relief pouring throughout his body. She'd made it. She'd made it back. He bent down to take fresh cookies out of the oven, not able to hide his grin.

"Just in time, Miss Helena. Did you find a present for Master Jason or...have we made a much longer journey, then?" He could she had. She looked exactly as she had so long ago, when he'd watched her disappear before his very eyes.

"That I did. But it was a good journey, I must say. Even with its trials."

And she hugged him, so tightly that she couldn't see the tear that escaped his eye and trailed down his cheek.

 A shining light indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...as I mentioned, I can't help but imagine the future of the Gotham-verse looking a little different than most of the comics--most notably, I see the timeline working a little differently. After all, Bruce and Selina meet a good ten years or so earlier than they usually do (and there's not as much of an age difference between the two), so it seems to me that their relationship would move a little faster, too. And of course, that affects a lot of other stuff. I'm still not sure if I'm happy with the way I handled Damian, but I've never liked the BrucexTalia ship, so Bruce's clone gave me a weird but convenient excuse to side-step around it.
> 
> Anyway, we've had enough angst lately (season 5 is killing me, y'all), so we need some happy endings. I do not apologize for giving the batfam one.


End file.
